Injecting a little luxury into life, without breaking the bank

[Sodthesystem]

I recently treated myself to a fancy coffee and macarons in a designer department store. Cheaper than buying anything there, but still felt luxurious :)

Thought it might be fun to start a thread on how people get their little fixes of luxury without spending a fortune.

What's an everything shower? Do people usually miss bits?

Well, I'm not on Insta so will just have to keep my eyes peeled for sample sales!

Planting rosebushes - in a pot or the ground. Admittedly they are a relatively chunky expenditure at first but it means years of gorgeous scented flowers that make the whole house smell amazing. I've bought a lot of cut flowers in the years since my mum had her stroke and went into nursing care, because it's one of the small nice things she can still enjoy. But I've come to feel supermarket flowers are hardly worth the effort because of the lack of scent.

See also; planting lavender.

Bunch of peonies £6.50, strawberries £4, bar of M&S chocolate £2.65, coffee & cake £10, kids clubs - often free, chocolate pistachios and clotted cream & shop scones also likely to be in the £10 range.......

Sell them on vinted instead and put the money towards what you actually want!

Life's too short to use "crap" for half a year and waiting to feel guilty free about boosting your mood every day.

No point - would barely get anything for them so makes much more financial sense for me to use them, then I get to really enjoy using the nice stuff, knowing that I’ve decluttered and saved money by using it.

You have to pay for a recipe and some herbs and buy the ingredients yourself?

Words fail me.

Donate to Hygiene Bank or similar and then you know you have helped someone out as well as getting to the stuff you want to use - win win

Buying a set of essential oils
I now make my own "purdy and figg" cleaning solution
My own fragrance for my room diffuser
My own facial oil
My own cleansing oil
My own body oil

Everything smells sensational for under £40 outlay and its been going for 2 years.

I used to buy clinique facial oil and itnwas about £38 then....I bet its much more now

I can’t afford to just donate a load of stuff that I could use unfortunately.

Falke socks. They have beautiful colors & fabrics that lasts forever, does not loose shape and really adds to my outfits (I work from home so a lot of casual wear).

Agree, they are the best chocolates ever, especially the butterscotch ones.

Was always a mug or a cushion as I love print and it would cheer me up to pick from my collection of mugs when I had a hot drink. Just remembered before that, when I lived alone in a tiny studio flat, Waitrose Stem Ginger Cookies were the absolute height of luxury!

An everything shower normally has extra bits that I do not get time to do daily. So in a normal shower I wash my hair and body but in an everything shower I would also exfoliate, shave, apply a hair mask, lotion afterwards etc etc.

My luxuries are:

Having nice pyjamas that make me smile. They're not crazy expensive.... around £40 a set but a big upgrade from the bog standard supermarket ones I used to have. Since I wear them every day price per use they are well worth it.

Champneys body balm for moisturising. It smells great and lasts ages.

Buying free range meat whenever it is reduced at the supermarket and putting it straight in the freezer. I'd rather have less but higher welfare meat.

Having an appointment at my local beauty salon for every six weeks. I can't afford a more regular appointment than that but it means I can have a pedicure during the summer, then swap to massages or facials in the colder months. It really feels like a treat to myself but costs the equivalent of about £8-£10 a week.

Lidl have some!!

What's are the push/posh shampoo people are using

Lidl

loccitane or Kiehl’s soap in the shower. Sometimes I go full Jo Malone.

I have biab gel on my nails every 3 weeks. They do it so beautifully. I have long, slim fingers but do a lot of making/ gardening so my natural nails always looked battered. Now they look sooooooi pretty all the time. I wear gloves to do the garden but biab is pretty indestructible .
Helen Macalinden knitwear and Russell and Bromley bags from ebay/ Vinted.
Costume jewellery which I swap on and off depending on the colour of my nails. I have lots of rings that look like diamonds/ opals/ pearls but were from antique fairs and cost a few pounds. I wear nice clothes (ebay) carry an expensive bag ( ebay or had it for 15 years)and have nice hair and nails so people assume the 'diamonds' are real.

I use a site called nightcafe to make ai drawings (it easy, anyone can do it. Just type a description of what you want to see and it'll generate it in picture form) and then have my art printed onto a mug via online print posting sites when I want some new ones :)

De-fuzzing your fanny

Mine is a lovely body oil. At £40 for a small bottle it's very expensive for me so I used to ask for it as my birthday / christmas present.

But then I thought screw it. If using a bit of oil every day makes me this happy then I can cut back on other things to pay for it. So I did. I still wince when I press "buy" though!

That sounds wonderful and as you say, simplistic x

Wine bottles in the fridge filled with tap water. Feels so luxe in summer to have properly cold water out of glass, for mixing with cordial or just on its own. And it's free!